Eight years ago I found out that I was going to have two weeks to prepare to become a mom. My eldest son is adopted and we had two weeks’ notice that he was going to come home to live with us and it was a really exciting time. He was two months at the time we found out about Elijah. I was just at that time trying to figure out my business and I wanted the success that I had just started to taste in my business to continue and I wasn’t sure how was going to make it all happen. And so the overwhelmed set in pretty quickly and I came across a tool that was a real lifesaver for me, a game-changer impact and it’s something that I continue to use today in my life and I recommend it to others whenever overwhelm sets in.

As business owners we get really busy and but we don’t feel productive.  We don’t really feel like we’re accomplishing anything. That feeling, when that sets in, I feel like this is the perfect antidote and it’s called the Most Important Task and it’s super simple but it works.  A few short weeks after Elijah came home and was with our family, I started to come to work again and I really wanted to limit my time at work.  I wanted to make sure that every moment counted.  What I would do as I ask myself this simple question: What is the most important task that I need to do today that will lead to significant results today or in the future? And I would literally ask myself that question, take a pen out and write it down when I got to work. And then once I wrote it down my commitment to myself was do that one thing. Do that one thing and then you’re done for the day.

So there’s a few things and tips and tricks on how you can use this in your life today. The first is you have to write it down, right? You have to get that pen out and you have to actually ask yourself that question intentionally, every day. What is that one Most Important Task that will lead to significant results for you and your business into the future? The thing about writing this down is that if you’re real with yourself it might be scary it might be that thing that you don’t really want to do or that you’d prefer to ignore for one more day or that you’d like just to put off again until tomorrow. It’s when you do those things that you really can harness momentum in your business.

So you do that first, you write it down. Either before you go home at night or first thing in the morning and then you do it. You do it first thing. And the reason you do it first thing is because, hey,  I can procrastinate like the best of them, perhaps you can too. So you write it down, you do it, and then you move on. Then you do something fun. You have a cup of coffee, you go home and you play with your baby. You enjoy the outdoors you do whatever or you move on to things you have to do in business because there will be other things and we all know that that’s a part of life too. But, getting that most important task done first thing in the morning has been a real game-changer for me and perhaps it could be for you too.

So try this out. Incorporate the most important task in your daily routine. And trust me, it will pay off dividends.